Close Reading with Computers This page intentionally left blank CLOSE READING with COMPUTERS Textual Scholarship, Computational Formalism, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas > Martin Paul Eve Stanford University Press Stanford, California Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses Open-access dissemination of this book in 2020 was made possible through the Philip Leverhulme Prize generously awarded to the author by The Leverhulme Trust. Suggested citation: Eve, Martin. Close Reading With Computers: Textual Scholarship, Computational Formalism, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. DOI: 10.21627/9781503609372 No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Eve, Martin Paul, 1986– author. Title: Close reading with computers : textual scholarship, computational formalism, and David Mitchell’s Cloud atlas / Martin Paul Eve. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018035887 (print) | LCCN 2018037273 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503609372 | ISBN 9781503606999 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503609365 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Mitchell, David (David Stephen). Cloud atlas—Criticism, Textual. | Criticism, Textual—Methodology—Computer programs. | Digital humanities—Research— Methodology. | Computational linguistics—Methodology. Classification: LCC PR6063.I785 (ebook) | LCC PR6063.I785 Z59 2019 (print) | DDC 823/.914—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035887 Cover design: Anne Jordan Text design: Kevin Barrett Kane Typeset at Stanford University Press in 11/15 Minion > To Nan, Ethel Gray. This page intentionally left blank Countless times since that day, a more experienced mechanic has pointed out to me something that was right in front of my face, but which I lacked the knowledge to see. It is an uncanny experience; the raw sensual data reaching my eye before and after are the same, but without the pertinent framework of meaning, the features in question are invisible. Once they have been pointed out, it seems impossible that I should not have seen them before. —Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments xi A Note on Citations and Editions xv Introduction: Close Reading, Computers, and Cloud Atlas 1 Chapter 1. The Contemporary History of the Book 25 Chapter 2. Reading Genre Computationally 61 Chapter 3. Historical Fiction and Linguistic Mimesis 97 Chapter 4. Interpretation 129 Conclusion 155 Appendix A: Textual Variants of Cloud Atlas 163 Appendix B: List of Digital Data Appendixes 195 Notes 197 Bibliography 225 Index 243 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I came to the computational study of novels through a chance inter- section of two of my main life interests: literature and computer pro- gramming. Before I was an academic, I was a computer programmer. At age seven I was incredibly lucky to have an information technology teacher—Andrew J. Read—who had written a book to teach children to program in the BASIC language.1 When I asked “what is computer pro- gramming?” I was immediately taken off the standard course of learn- ing Microsoft Word (the dreadful syllabus that so often works its way into school-level Information Technology courses) and transferred to study Mars and Back for the remainder of the year. I have never stopped my programming activities, and I find the process deeply satisfying in a very different way from that of writing literary criticism. I would like to thank Andrew for recognizing this interest and for nurturing it. A good teacher can make all the difference in life. When I found myself conducting so-called digital humanities research on not just a single author but a single novel, I initially fell into a slump of despair. Who, I wondered, was going to publish this monograph that was both esoteric in subject and unconventional in method? Some colleagues expressed disbelief that I would pursue so unpublishable a project even while applauding my integrity (though I think they might have meant “On your head be it”). Fortunately, Emily-Jane Cohen at Stanford University xii Acknowledgments Press did not toss this manuscript onto the reject pile, and for recognizing the potential here, as well as for all of her other editorial help and work, I thank her, along with Faith Wilson Stein, Jessica Ling, Stephanie Adams, Joe Abbott, Anne Jordan, and Derek Gottlieb. Several people commented on draft versions of this book and encour- aged me in pursuit of its goals. For this I would like to thank Alex Gil, Paul Harris, Rose Harris-Birtill, Ernesto Priego, and Ted Underwood. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers commissioned by Stanford University Press. As ever, I have profited from many conversations with Birkbeck colleagues about this book, including Joe Brooker and Caroline Edwards. I would like to thank Erik Ketzan for bringing specific legal is- sues to my attention. It is increasingly rare to be able to say it of university management in 2018, but I would like to thank the administration of Birkbeck for making our university such a pleasant place to work. Other friends, colleagues, and acquaintances have helped me—some face-to- face and some through social media—to write this work. Of those who spring to mind, conversations with Siân Adiseshiah, James Baker, Peter Boxall, Bryan Cheyette, Matt Kirschenbaum, Jenny Richards, and Jane Winters remain most clearly with me. Thanks to Simon Davies for help- ing to clean up some of my prose. My thanks to Yoshimichi Suematsu for helping me with the Japanese translation of Cloud Atlas. I would like, also, to thank David Mitchell, who is unfailingly generous in responding to queries from academics. My (extended) family—Nan, Mum, Richard, and Alyce, as well as Helen’s family of Susan, Sam, Juliet, Lisa, Carin, Anthony, and Julia—have all been supportive of my work in various ways, for which I am most grateful. Thanks also to Jane, Mary, Lucy, Heidi, and Mr. P. Several prototype chapters of this work have appeared elsewhere, al- lowing me to test their viability with a range of critics. Part of Chapter 1 originally appeared as “ ‘You Have to Keep Track of Your Changes’: The Version Variants and Publishing History of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas,” Open Library of Humanities 2, no. 2 (2016). The version herein contains additional information about the splicing of the chapters of the novel and differences between versions, as well as further information on the Italian, Spanish, German, and Japanese translations. A section of Chapter 2 came Acknowledgments xiii from “Close Reading with Computers: Genre Signals, Parts of Speech, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas,” SubStance 46, no. 3 (2018): 76–104. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2017 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved. An earlier version of Chapter 3 can be found in “The Historical Imaginary of Nineteenth-Century Style in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas,” C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings 6, no. 3 (2018): 1–22. The version herein extends that work by additional comparison to the Corpus of Contemporary American English and provides extra evidence for the claims about the language Mitchell uses to construct his stylistic imaginary. I first experimented with the material on reading redaction in the conclusion here in my “On the Political Aesthetics of Metadata,” Alluvium 5, no. 1 (2016): http://dx.doi.org/10.7766/alluvium.v5.1.04. Finally, as always, I would like to thank my wife, Helen, with all my love. She is sharp and incisive, patient and kind, beautiful and loving. She even learned to appreciate this book, despite expressing skepticism when I first mentioned the idea and despite possessing little digital inclination. It is her support and love that has made this work possible. All author royalties from this book are donated to Arthritis Research UK. This page intentionally left blank A NOTE ON CITATIONS AND EDITIONS For reasons that will become clear in Chapter 1, citing Cloud Atlas poses numerous challenges. Citations within this book are, for the most part, both to David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (London: Sceptre, 2004)—called the P edition—with ISBN 978-1-4447-1021-2, and to David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (New York: Random House, 2008)—called the E edition— with ISBN 978-0-375-50725-0. Where the text differs among the UK, US, and Kindle editions, alternative sources are cited in each case with endnoted reference to the textual variance therein (in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style, consecutive references to the same edition omit the edition details and refer to the last-cited version). References to the chapter “An Orison of Sonmi~451” are made through the Ques- tion and Response numbering system outlined in Chapter 1, allowing for verification across editions. References to translations of Cloud Atlas are given when under discussion